With all the fancy bread recipes available on the Internet, and the glorious pictures we can find with a Google image search, I still prefer a simpler, more basic bread recipe. I’ve found a number of recipes, including Erma Rombauer’s version from an old copy of Joy of Cooking, circa 1975. The one I’ve settled on, and the one I use to make almost all my daily bread and hard rolls is one that takes the best ideas from each. On the artisan bread website The Fresh Loaf , there are several versions of this classic bread. Try any or all of them, and make your own choice.
  For my recipe you will need only sourdough starter, bread flour, water, a small amount of sugar, some salt, and a bit of oil. The sugars are the food the yeast uses to make gas to expand. This recipe is versatile.  It can be used for regular loaves, football shaped batards, long, thin baguettes, or hard rolls in various shapes.  The crumb, and bubble size can be adjusted by changing the number of proofings, or rises.  The flavor can be changed subtly by using different sugars, or oils.  The version that I offer here will be for a single large batard, with a fairly large bubble size — what we typically think of as ‘French Bread’.  It will have only one proofing, that is one rise, one punch down and rest, and a rise after shaping

Portion out in containers one and a half cups of active sourdough, four cups of bread flour, into which we add 2 T of a sugar, one and a half t of salt, (sea salt if you have it) one and a half T of oil.  I’ll use EVOO, but you can use whatever oil you prefer.
You will need to take your starter out of the refrigerator the night before to come to room temperature. Feed your starter by adding one cup of flour, and one cup of fairly warm water. (use the baby formula wrist test) Let the starter ferment in a warm, draft-free place. Your oven, with either the pilot light flame, or the oven light on will keep your oven at about eighty-five degrees.  It will bubble and foam in a relatively short time. A cup each of flour and warm water will give you enough happy, activated sourdough to let you take out the cup and a half of starter you will use for the bread.

To the sourdough add eight more ounces of warm water, and the oil.  Mix well with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. You will find that the sourdough, the oil and the water will all fit snugly, but comfortably in a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup.  The flour and other two dry ingredients will fit comfortably in a four cup Pyrex cup. If you are using a stand mixer, or a bread machine set on the ‘dough’ setting, add the ingredients in the order your manufacturer recommends. The Sunbeam wants the liquids in first, and then the dry.  Make sure the machine is set on the ‘dough’setting. Turn it on, and let it mix your ingredients. Use your spatula to help it along at the beginning, so that all the materials are incorporated.
Let the dough mix and knead for 15 - 20 minutes, to allow the gluten in the flour to soak up the liquids and begin to stretch. If you are making your dough by hand, mix as much of the flour as you can easily manage in a large bowl. You will probably get all but about a cup of the flour incorporated just stirring. For the remainder, turn your batter out onto a floured surface, and try flopping the dough back and forth, from wet side to dry side, until all the flour is incorporated.

You can knead the dough for a few more minutes, but the flour in your dough has now been ‘hydrated’ and the gluten will now start to develop the stretchy network that holds the fermentation bubbles, and provides the texture for the finished loaves.

Use your mixing bowl, if it’s big enough as the proofing bowl. Wash it out, and oil it well. Gather your dough ball up off the work surface, tuck the odd corners and such underneath to form a ball. Flop it around in the oiled bowl until the surface is completely covered. Cover with a damp tea towel while it rises.

Go do something else for an hour or so. When your dough has doubled in size, about an hour, punch the dough down with your fists, pulling up the sides into a bag shape. Flop it out onto your floured surface again, cover it with plastic, and let it rest for fifteen or twenty minutes. It should have a smooth, elastic surface at this point.

We will now shape the loaf. You have about two pounds or so of dough. That will make one big free-form loaf, or two smaller ones. If you choose to make two loaves, cut the dough ball into equal parts, set one aside for the moment. Pat the dough out to a long rectangle, getting it as thin as you can. You may use a rolling pin, if you wish, for this step. Roll up the sheet of dough like a cakeroll, sealing the bottom seam by spritzing it with a little water, and pinching it closed. Tuck the ends under, sealing them the same way. When you are satisfied with the shape, move it onto a baking sheet that you have prepared by sprinkling a light dusting of corn meal onto it. This will prevent the loaf from sticking. If you have room on the cookie sheet, form and place the second loaf. If you are making one large artisan loaf, the same cakeroll method works just as well for a single loaf.

For decoration, you can use poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried onion flakes, kosher salt flakes, or coarse sea salt, caraway or fennel seeds, or whatever takes your fancy. You ‘glue’ them on by spritzing the top (and sides) of the loaf with water, and sprinkling on your toppings. Cover the loaf or loaves with your handy-dandy sheet of plastic or damp tea towel. The last rise will not take very long. After rising, and just before the sheet pan goes into the oven, use a sharp knife, or box cutter, and slash the tops of the loaves diagonally several times, or long ways once, or even make a design.
There are a number of ways to make steam in your oven to toughen the crust, but far and away the easiest is to simply spritz the oven floor, and walls with water from your spritzer bottle, when you slide in the baking pan. Close the door. Set a timer for twelve minutes. After a minute or two, open the door and quickly spritz the inside of the oven again. When your timer dings, open the oven, turn the baking sheet around front to back, and close the door. That helps the bread brown evenly. You will notice that your loaves have bloomed considerably, and started to brown slightly.

Reset the temperature control to 350 degrees, reset the timer to eighteen minutes. Your bread might not be done in eighteen minutes, but we will look, and decide if the loaves are brown enough for our taste. By choosing the shorter time, we can be sure not to over cook, or even burn the loaves. After all, we can reset the timer.

When you are happy with the way your bread looks, you can test for doneness in one of two ways. Tap the top and sides sharply with your fingertips. If you get a nice solid ‘tock’ sound, it’s done. If you happen to have a chef’s instant read needle thermometer, poke that into one end. It should read 200 degrees internal temperature.

Pull out your pan and turn the loaves out onto a wire rack, or just turn them over onto their tops, to cool. Resist the temptation to rip off and butter a chunk for at least ten minutes, or the steam will escape too quickly and the texture will not be as airy inside.

OK, we have produced a pretty batard loaf, that can be ripped apart and eaten out of hand.

If you wish to produce a more conventional loaf, suitable for slicing for sandwiches, or toast, we will use an extra proofing period. After the first punch-down, instead of letting the dough rest for just fifteen minutes before shaping, cover the dough again and let it rise until doubled in size again. Punch down a second time and let rest. The second proofing does two things to your dough. It makes the bubbles, the holes in the bread, smaller, and makes the bite chewier. At the same time, you are allowing the little wild yeastie-beaties and their lacto-bacterial buddies to develop a stronger, and heartier sour taste.

When the dough is doubled in bulk again, punch it down, roll or pat it out flat, roll it, and put it into loaf pans. For this particular recipe, yielding two pounds or so of dough, you will need two loaf pans, or your bread will look like a huge golden brown mushroom, with a funny-looking little rectangular base. Trust me! Make two loaves!

Miz Parker is an inquisitive old soul, who enjoys cooking and feeding her friends. Her maternal grandmother taught her to cook, with an emphasis on Central and Eastern European foods and methods. Miz Parker has enjoyed cooking and baking for her family and friends since she was very young.